


Master's thoughts

by helissa



Category: Tales of Arcadia (Cartoons), Trollhunters - Daniel Kraus & Guillermo del Toro
Genre: Merlin reflects about Hisirdoux, Merlin starting to think he could be like a father?, Sad, Set in Trollhunters and partly in Wizards, feeling guilty, introspective merlin, kinda angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-19
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:00:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26545627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helissa/pseuds/helissa
Summary: «I’ll sleep just enough» Merlin’s said to his apprentice and to himself. He’s closed his heavier and heavier eyes. «Learn to live, Hisirdoux» he has added and then said nothing more, letting the tiredness take over.(...)He’s gone away like that, with the same rough and bored manners with which he’d normally tell Hisirdoux to go milk him the Slorr.It’s a thought that taunts Merlin when he wakes up.Merlin | introspective
Relationships: Hisirdoux "Douxie" Casperan & Merlin (Tales of Arcadia)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 35





	Master's thoughts

In a vibrant morning of early spring, with the most violent battle ever, Merlin has defeated Morgana and trapped her in a shiny and powerful prison- a giant Hearstone.  
  
Then he has poured his shoes’ toes when he’s descended on the earth, lacking also the mere energy necessary for floating slightly just upon the ground. He’s leaned against Hisirdoux and he’s felt more tiredness than he had ever experienced in all his life: and he knows well what that means.  
There, under the wood’s trees, Merlin has given Hisirdoux a list of things to do, maybe the most accurate, complete and longest he had ever written. And then he’s gone to sleep.  
«I’ll sleep just enough» he’s said to his apprentice and to himself. He’s closed his heavier and heavier eyes. «Learn to live, Hisirdoux» he has added and then said nothing more, letting the tiredness take over.  
  
And so, with those exact words, Merlin has left his apprentice’s life for some years.  
Nine hundred, to be precise.  
He’s gone away like that, with the same rough and bored manners with which he’d normally tell Hisirdoux to go milk him the Slorr.  
  
It’s a thought that taunts Merlin when he wakes up.  
Of course, it taunts him from a very remote position, in a relatively far corner of his mind. That is for the most invaded by other emergencies slightly more pressing- including the end of any hope for the world’s future.  
But he just can’t live without the image of Hisirdoux and of his inability buzzing in his mind, as an annoying insect. It does not help seeing that, after nine hundred years, nothing seems to have become even vaguely easier, in that world of them. Hisirdoux has got ages to spend in learning how to live, to travel, to practice. Merlin’s sure about this, but… but not knowing what his apprentice has done in all those years in part worries him. Especially considering Hisirdoux’s innate ability of getting hurt even in a pillows-lined room.  
His accurate, complete and long list has been respected, more or less. Merlin can see it by the tomb in which the Trollhunter and his team have rescued him. What else Hisirdoux has done remains a mystery, a secret he’s not part of.  
  
He needs his magic also for this, Merlin tells himself.  
Before getting to work on the armours for the annoying Tobias and the dear Lady Claire, he plans to send a herald looking for Hisirdoux.  
Watching that world, thought, Merlin realises that such useful customs have been lost in time, as the blacksmith’s workshops. Or as the troll’s good habit of simply fall silent in his presence: that Blinkous is getting hurt, if he continues in that way with him.  
Busy in forging and sanding, Merlin thinks that, all things considered, he could be able to contact at least Archie, Hisirdoux’s familiar.  
The idea of speaking about that situation with the Trollhunter’s mother is pondered for a while and then discarded. What could even understand that woman, by Hisirdoux’s description? And what description could Merlin give? One nine hundred years old?  
Not to mention that his past experiences with Nimue and Morgana strongly suggest to avoid any confrontation with such creatures as women. So, between explaining himself and searching his pupil’s annoying familiar, Merlin chooses Archie.  
Besised, he knows that the cat and Hisirdoux are right there, for any ironic jokes of the fate. They’re there, in that so far from England town- that apparently, seems to have only the name, vaguely linked to magic. If one do not consider, deeply neat the abyss, Trollmarket and Morgana’s prison stone.  
  
Merlin has felt Hisirdoux while they were passing through Arcadia’s streets, seeking the Trollhunter’s house. It’s been a quick spasm of blue magic, yet so intense he’s turned his head to check the roads near them. He’s seen nothing.  
He’s managed to put himself together, before returning to the others and entering the mansion. But Hisirdoux is there, without a doubt.  
In that there, where there will be only the greatest battle from Killahead.  
  
Merlin regrets not having added to his list some not-magic ways he could use to contact Hisirdoux. He had thought that putting them was foolish, and he had avoided also to mention ways Hisirdoux could use to wake him. He hadn’t felt- and he will never- the impelling urge of getting bothered on average of twice a week by adolescent crisis of doubtful value.  
But he regrets anyway not having any ways he could contact Hisirdoux with.  
He needs at least Archie and he hopes he has enough power to reach it, with a single message in any case.  
  
“ _Leave the city_ ”.  
Merlin manages to transmit those words only at the end, right after he has finished the armours. He feels Archie’s mind slipping nearby that surrogate blacksmith’s workshop the Trollhunter has given him. Archie passes by right near there, in the form of a cat busy wandering around. Merlin feels it, stops and focuses.  
He grabs Archie’s mind with a mental green yank that’s made more by stubbornness than by proper magic. And then he reports to it his message of three clear and concise words.  
  
“ _Leave the city_ ”.  
They’re only three words, clear and concise.  
His magic’s last glimmers have hardly let him elaborate them. Merlin hopes it’s been worthy, since now he barely has some drops of magic in his veins.  
It’s a least a message that can not be misunderstood.  
Hisirdoux has always been particularly skilled in deciding on his own what to do, but he has never avoided a precise order. Merlin can only hope that those nine hundred years in which he simply wasn’t there, those nine hundred years that he has not supervised, haven’t brought too additional recklessness to Hisirdoux.  
  
“ _Leave the city_ ”.  
He doesn’t say or add anything else, with the same rough and bored manners with which he’d normally tell Hisirdoux to go milk him the Slorr.  
But in that occasion, to be honest, Merlin hasn’t really the strenght to say anything else. The effort he has spent in stopping Archie has been more challenging than he had predicted.  
Therefore, what is left of his magic now is literally crumbling apart inside Merlin, like a reef’s fragments in the grip of storm’s violence.  
Merlin regards himself lucky if, stopping Morgana, he won’t die.  
  
He would like to see Hisirdoux one last time.  
Merlin realises it while, after a draining wait, the new half-troll Trollhunter and his team have finally decide what to do. The consideration hits him right when he’s walking to Trollmarket- he and that giant thing of a troll called AAARRRGGHH or something like that.  
The Trollhunter and his team are determined to stop Gunmar and the death of Arcadia’s people. Something admirable, all things considered- thought, above all, it’s something that could have the world’s end as a direct consequence. The great and final purpose is and stays stopping Morgana and her Eternal Night.  
But seeing the big picture is something that is earned with ages of suffering and sacrifices. And therefore is something that only few can have. In that team, it seems that for now only Merlin brings its weight.  
At least that situation can have one bright side: if Hisirdoux hasn’t received or accepted his message, the Trollhunter and his team can protect him.  
Merlin can’t.  
Part of him maybe would want it, would desire it, because at least it’d implicate the high probability of not dying. Or of dying near Hisirdoux, seeing him one last time.  
But it’s all a groundless thought and Merlin limits himself to grit his teeth, while they slip under ground, searching his old apprentice.  
  
He would like to see Hisirdoux one last time, he thinks again.  
And, like the other times that thought has reached him, he’s a little surprised by it.  
He had never realised how he misses that rambunctious and impatient lad.  
Grabbing in his thoughts Archie’s mind hasn’t helped much. It only has given him the imagine of a Hisirdoux with blue locks, strange melodies in his ears and black clothes not made of leather- not really something suitable for magic’s free flowing in the body.  
It’s not enough for Merlin.  
Merlin struggles to admit it even to himself, even in that moment in which that giant thing and he advance in the darkness, Morgana and the death more and more round the corner. He struggles to admit it, but what he has seen it’s simply not enough.  
  
He would like to see Hisirdoux one last time.  
Merlin would like to see more of Hisirdoux, he wants to be sure that those nine hundred years of freedom haven’t been too much. He wants to be able to afford the no regrets’ sweetness: no more regrets for having left Hisirdoux alone, being able to know that maybe he hasn’t really abandoned him.  
Part of Merlin would want Hisirdoux right there, even when he’s right in front of Morgana. He’d want Hisirdoux where he can see and protect him. He’s the greatest wizard of all times, isn’t he? He could do both, stop Morgana and protect Hisirdoux. World saved, apprentice rescued.  
The most rational and cruelest part of Merlin is what, at the end, always prevails, even during his own daydreams. The best guess would see death for both of them, if they’re lucky a less painful one for Hisirdoux.  
  
So Merlin finds himself praying, while from far he glimpses the shimmer of Morgana’s golden armour. He prays that the message Archie’s received has worked, that Hisirdoux is not searching him. That he’s stopped whatever he was doing to leave the city.  
That Hisirdoux’l has already left the city.  
Please.  
  
Merlin knows that Arcadia would need another warrior, another guardian that shields the innocents. But why risking or wasting in that way the life of a future Mater Wizard? Why throwing themselves under Gunmar’s army, when they have no idea about what tomorrow would bring them?  
Hisirdoux could be the one and only hope and future of all the wizards.  
So he must live.  
  
At least, that’s what Merlin likes to repeat to himself.  
True is even simpler.  
He wants Hisirdoux safe.  
He wants life for him.  
  
If that night declares Merlin’s death, he wants the assurance that at least Hisirdoux could continue his life in a not so horrible world, in the same way he’s probably lived those nine centuries. With good and bad moments.  
He would regret not to see him one last time, but the greatest good is generally superior and opposite to what Merlin really desires. He can afford to avoid Hisirdoux that war, thought.  
  
Merlin wants to believe that Hisirdoux and Archie have gone away. He continues believing and hoping it for all the following hours, even when death breathes in his face in the form of Morgana’s magic coils.  
He wants to believe it but, especially when Morgana advances and drags him in the air, Merlin continues to feel inside him the rhythmical pulse of Hisirdoux’s magic. He quietly swears and curses, in every moment, hoping now that that pulse is not stopping, not in that same rough and bored manners with which death cuts lives around itself.  
  
Even when he falls and passes out, he hope it.  
A pray is one of the last thing his mind produces.  
  
When the battle is finally over, Avalon’s staff in again held in his hands and the Eternal Night has vanished away whirling. The sun lightens again the world, just behind some soft, white and ordinary clouds.  
The Trollhunter James “Jim” Lake has made Merlin more than proud, with his actions, honouring the amulet.  
And now it’s all over.  
The war, at least.  
  
Time for farewells has just started.  
All must be cleaned and reorganised, another house for the trolls is to find- a new Heart Stones in the realm of New Jersey. Time for farewells, then, even before a real welcoming one.  
The greatest good demands and again demands and Merlin knows what he must do.  
Like the Trollhunter takes his time, even Merlin acquires his.  
  
His heart is less heavy.  
The pulse of Hisirdoux’s magic has never stopped.  
  
Merlin is tempted to go to him in that same moment. Hisirdoux is there, in the city, they’re both in Arcadia, watching its dust and ruins, the new statues all around and humans and trolls celebrating again together after centuries.  
Hisirdoux is down there and maybe he feels Merlin just like Merlin feels him.  
Yet, suddenly Merlin finds himself frozen, unable to move from that hill which towers the city.  
Thanks to his found again and breathed again magic, he can easily locate Hisirdoux and watch him. Merlin inspects every single movement of him, while his apprentice remains seated with the back on a tumbledown school’s wall.  
Curled up Archie near to him, flowing fingers on an infernal liute’s strings, not a single important wound to be seen- only dust and little lumps; around him, children and trolls and adults and… and a strange pink-haired girl, that seems indeed to have a sort of magic and witch’s aura.  
Hisirdoux is down there, not wounded, singing and playing among the people, with the same sweetness that a child in a feast day could have. He comforts people like all of them could become those children in a feast day and aren’t really, sadly, all adults on the abyss of a just ended war.  
Merlin inspects and observes him, trying to catch every single detail: maybe that would help him in understanding how much and what of Hisirdoux has changed in those nine hundred years.  
But at the same time, Merlin doesn’t move. He stays there, in the hill’s high ground.  
  
Despite having retrieved most of his powers, Merlin can’t find the strenght to reach Hisirdoux and look at him in those eyes he has left alone for nine hundred years.  
His powers are almost like the old times, bordering the infinite, but Merlin does not think they’ll be enough in front of Hisirdoux. He knows that the choice of going to sleep and falling away for all that time hasn’t really been a choice: he could have done little else. If he hadn’t slept and rested, there wouldn’t have been another day for him in the earth.  
But inside him, seeing how much has changed that world that before hosted indiscriminately wizards, knights, kings and every magic creatures, he asks himself how lonely Hisirdoux has felt in his eternity, among simple humans that grew and died all the time around him.  
The strange pink-haired girl is a relief at least in this. It can be possible that, after all, other wizards and witches foot the earth again and have gladdened those nine hundred years of abandon.  
  
It’s a thought that is a very small consolation for Merlin. He knows for sure that he will not be able to forgive himself completely: he could have done so much more for his apprentice.  
Not knowing what Hisirdoux could say about it, thought, it’s what upsets him the most.  
And rather than having the certainty of his rejext, Melin prefers having nothing.  
Staying there, in the hesitates, watching Hisirdoux from the far hill’s high ground.  
  
Unexpectedly, his the Trollhunter’s mother the one that first reaches Merlin, seeking reassunance that he tries to give her with wise words far from his trapped heart.  
Jim, the dear Lady Claire and the trolls arrive shortly after. Merlin wishes that the last tearful farewells slipped on him like rain: but in reality it hurts to see the one between Lady Lake and her son. It brings his eyes again and again on that school, almost hoping to see Hisirdoux running from there, towards him.  
It’s a hope that does well, bad and scare him all in once.  
  
The farewells’ momet finally comes to an end.  
Merlin sighes slowly, looks away, moves with difficulty.  
He starts down with the trolls towards the wood’s depths, without turning back, neither when Tobias arrives there rattling in his armour.  
Merlin simply waits that all that ends, trying not to think anything. When the time is on, he turns a little to the Trollhunter.  
«I believe this belongs to you, Trollhunter» he says, creating again the Daylight Sword and putting it in his hands. Merlin’s lost again two apprentices in the same day, but at least he can be able to give Jim something. His oldest apprentice has vanished away, he’s not strong enough to meet his youngest. All for the greatest good, for the biggest picture. In that, he can be again useful, for the world.  
  
The wood welcomes him, giving him again the precise role needed in front of the greatest good.  
And so, in few steps, Merlin returns to be only Merlin, Master Wizard of Camelot, the “Immortal”, the greatest wizard of all time.  
Not more a father that fears of losing his own son.  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, everyone.  
> helissa again here, ready (and a little bit tired) to start.
> 
> Rewatching some of the episodes to catch better Merlin's personality, I was very curious about what he was thinking of our dear Douxie, especially when he wakes up and doesn't find near to him. So I decided to study better this concept and this project was born.  
> I hope to have portraited Merlin in character, but at the same time I really want to analyze his mind. During some events, he was pratically alone against his old apprentice, having no idea about where Hisirdoux was. Considering that Douxie and Morgana are the only one of his kind that he knows and at the same time the only link to the world he has left for sleep, it has to be pretty challenging, if not tragic.
> 
> Also, I mean no harsh against Barbara Lake, that I really appreciate as a character, but I don't think Merlin would trust her in finding Douxie. He knows nothing of the modern world, it's true, but he seems to me a person that prefer working alone and in his ways- using magic. I have also my precise headcanon about Merlin and Nimue's relationship- the conseguences of how bad it ended lead also Merlin not to trust so much women that he feels powerful. Not because he's maschilist (even thought middle ages' mentality would be pretty different than ours) but because he fears them.
> 
> For now, it's all.  
> Next chapter would be focused on Wizards!
> 
> Have a great day,   
>  -helissa


End file.
